Wednesday, 29 June 2016

I have been playing SimCity BuildIt for about 1 year plus and I still love to play it on my iPhone. I love playing SimCity series on my PC when I was a kid back then. I was so excited when I got to know that SimCity was available in iOS. Due to extreme excitement over the game I started to play non stop for few hours and keep on build, design, and level up to unlock more items to craft and so on.

I hit my first pay wall - not enough storage and it is difficult to get storage items as well in global trade market. Then I quickly search online on tips, guide, and strategy to play this game. There are plenty of tips out there and I spent few hours to look through, after read enough i decide to unlock all storage before proceed to level up my city again. So, I start to spend time at global trade market, join SimCity BuildIt facebook group, adding GameCenter friends and so on to exchange storage items. I thought I could make it to unlock all storage items but eventually I got burn out and get bored about the game then delete it from my phone and leave all related facebook groups.

After few months, I started to miss this game and download again. This time I still insists to unlock all storage items before proceed to level up my city. At the same time, SimCity BuildIt launch new Paris town with even more items to collect from airport. This got me fall in love again, I unlock Paris airport and manage to collect few Paris building items and sell it in global trade market to earn some money. Again after few weeks I got bored as well due to keep on unlock storage items in global trade market. This time I leave it on my phone and I know I will revisit the game after few months. Well, I really know myself well, I play it again when SimCity launch London town and I unlock London airport and manage to collect London building items. It got me jealous when people show off London eye or Eiffel Tower over the internet.

After few months with London I put this game aside again until it launch Contest of Mayors! I found this Contest of Mayors is very interested concept to earn speedup and golden key. The best part of Contest of Mayors is each league only compete against with same level players around the world at least there is a chance I can get top 3 to win some great prize from there! 5 days Contest of Mayors are my first priority to build, launch disaster, collect, and so on instead of focus on air cargo or ship cargo. I hope one day I could win first place in Megalopolitan League to get 2000 sim cash! That would be awesome and I can unlock lots of sim cash decoration!

This Contest of Mayors keep me playing for few weeks before I stop again. Fast forward to latest update which is the Future City and drones flying in the city! Oh, I love this update the most compared to all previous update, of course every new update give me some interest to play for awhile. Even tho I love future city so much but my level still far to unlock future city! I search a little about future city and it seems there is a new currency and new storage are introduced in future city update. I hope this will be easy to unlock and getting future city items will be cheap.

Since unlocking max storage is such a long way to go, along the way I slowly collect land expansion and Vu's tower required items and unlock them slowly without try to "hunt" in global trade market. Currently my Vu's tower is level 14 and my land expansion is about to complete. Oh, I give up on sea expansion for now as it required more quantity per items to unlock and this will restrict me to collect storage items. Sea expansion will be my next project to unlock after complete storage capacity.

That's all for this time, I will update in future when I feel to write more about SimCity BuildIt. Thanks for spending time to read my blog, please do comment below to share what is your thought and what is your hate and love playing SimCity BuildIt game.

In a nut shell:

The Hate:

Stop level up my city for long time to restrict new items needed in air cargo or ship cargo so I can focus to unlock max storage.

Need to be very patient to spend lots of time to unlock storage without using simcash

The Love:

Love every new update that introduce new features for example Paris, London, Mountain, Contest of Mayors, Future City, and so on

Compete with same city level players in Contest of Mayors to earn awesome reward

Sunday, 26 June 2016

Rodeo Stampede - Sky Zoo Safari (By Featherweight Games Pty Limited)

Rodeo Stampede is a endless running game + "capture" wild animal to your zoo in the sky safari! You plays as cowboy or cowgirl (customize at the beginning of the game) and hop from one animal to another animal for endless running. There are many zones in Rodeo Stampede and each zone will have different wild animal for you to capture. If you notice "New" wording blinking on top of wild animal head that mean that wild animal is new and you can capture it. Only those animals with "New" are able to capture.

Once you hop on a new wild animal, it will takes few second to capture it successful . However, during the capture progress in case you hit any obstacles or other animals, it will fail and you are game over. So take note on this and avoid this especially when you found a new rare wild animal. The wild animal will be available in your sky zoo once successful capture it. Then head to your sky zoo and start build habitat or upgrade existing habitat level to unlock more upgrades.

Quick Tips:

Tips #1: Build Habitat As Soon As Possible
Build a new habitat as soon as possible you capture a new type of wild animal. Build habitat required some coins so always keep like 100-150 coins. New habitat with new animal will help you earn coins during zoo operating hour.

Tips #2: Hop From Animal to Animal
You need to hop from one animal to another animal before the animal get mad with red "!" icon on their head. Some animals when they get mad they will slow you down, throw you off in random direction, and etc. So hop form one animal to another animal the moment you notice red "!" icon on their head.

Tips #3: Abuse Ostrich Red "!" Mark
Yes, you read it right, this tip is totally contradiction with Tips #2 above. Why? Other animals will slow you or throw you off, but Ostrich will speed up when they are mad - They Run Very Fast!
So ride on Ostrich to enjoy the speeding and you just need to pay more attention on front obstacle and avoid crowd animals.

Tips #4: Coins, Coins, Coins!
You need lots of coins in Rodeo Stampede such as build habitat, upgrade habitat, and explore + expand new area to capture new type of wild animals. Luckily there few options to earn coins - iAP (double coins for zoo business, or lump sum of coins), get double rewards coins when you watch ads for 30 seconds, complete mission to earn some coins, and hit crates to get some coins. (So far only found out these method to earn coins, it might have more i'm not sure)

Tips #5: Pick Starting Animal to Ride
Since you capture so many types of wild animals and you are allow to pick your starting animal to run along with you. Just head to your sky zoo and pick a habitat and tap on animal paw icon and tap on "Ride" button.

Thanks for reading my Guide & Tips post, let me know in the comment below if you found a better tips to play Rodeo Stampede!

Tuesday, 14 June 2016

Gem Hunters iOS Game Review

Gem Hunters (Free with iAP) by Armor Games, is a turn based match 3 puzzle iOS game with RPG elements. There are 3 playable characters to choose from Rogue, Wizard, and Knight. Each character specialise in different area for example, rogue increase attack 20%, wizard increase magic 20%, and knight increase defence 20%. Once players selected character, there is a short intro and tutorial to guide players to familiarised the game play and the interface.

The game play is pretty easy match at least 3 same elements (color) gem and players are able to match by diagonal direction as well. Each color represent 1 element and different monster / boss have resist / weak against certain elements. Attack will increased when players attack monster / boss with effective gem at the same time attack will reduced when player attack monster / boss with less effective gem. There would be a "Star" Gem when players match 7 same color gems in a single turn. "Star" Gem + match 3 gem will create a critical attack to monster / boss.Note: Please use "Star" Gem + gem that monster weak against to boost players attack.

The game also offers 4 equipment slots to allow players to equip weapons, armours, or skills (Spirit Animal). There are no restriction to which slot to equip which equipment. Players are allow to equip 4 weapons or 4 skills. Each item comes with common (white), uncommon (green), and rare (purple) Note: So far I only manage to get rare, i'm not sure any higher grade equipment beyond rare.
In order to activate skills, players are required to collect a number of element gem during the battle. For example, a skill that required 20 green gem to activate the skills.

Equipments are upgradeable and different elements required different set of orb to upgrade. Upgrade material dropped from battle with monsters or players (Arena, discuss more below) after player win the battle. Equipment too dropped from battle with monster or players but the chances are quite rare. Equipments come with boost (special effect) such as 5% chances to stun enemy, chances to heal your character, and so on. Besides, equipment comes with some basic stat such as attack, magic, and defence. Those states will increase by upgrade the equipment with upgrade material dropped from monster. The higher level of upgrade the number of quantity material to upgrade will increase as well. There is another way to get new equipments which is using iAP to unlock chest. It costs 25 iAP currency (Gem) to unlock it, 20 Gems = USD 1.99.

Character comes with level and experience feature and players able to decide which stat (attach, defence, magic) to up every time character levelled up. So players are freely to customised what type of character that fit their play style.

Next, the most interesting and competitive feature in Gem Hunters - Arena which also known as PVP (not real time). Each battle won to gain some points and this points will define players ranking in the Arena. Higher ranking in the Arena will get rare equipment after Arena is ended. There is a time period in Arena menu so players able to know when the Arena will end.

There is no limit for players to keep on challenge in Arena as long as players win the battle, for every battle players lose 1 live will lost and each live is required 10 minutes to generate. This live system affects in both Arena and story mode. There is no effective and ineffective element when PVP in arena so to win basically need high attack, "Star" Gems, some luck when system generate element gem. Each time players are given 2 turns

The game do integrate friend feature such as add friend by using code and not sure what is the actual function as for now there is no function to summon your friend to help you on battle. So if you are reading this, this is my friend ID: a91ac235

One issue found - some times the game pop up "No Internet Connection" when I win battle, I have a good wifi signal and I have a strong telco signal when I play without wifi. If you cancel, your progress of this battle will not save, so what I do was put it there for 1 or 2 minutes and press retry again. I will keep on retry until success as some times I won the boss stage which I plan to play that stage again.

In a nut shell, if you are a fan of match 3 puzzle like me - try this game! It is fun and challenging at the same.

Above review is based on version 1.15.1. If any part of the review above is not valid in latest version, kindly comment below. Thanks for reading my long post! Please let me know what you thinks about this game in comment section!

Saturday, 28 February 2015

Introduction:

Prison Life RPG Guides is to provide as detail as possible guide to all prisoners! This post will update from time to time when I found out new tips or trick or new how-to. You can reads Prison Life RPG review here [Prison Life RPG Review]

Content:

Which Character is Easy to Play for Beginner?

Join Gang As Soon As Possible

Who to Make Relationship With?

Where to Buy or Get Certain Food or Items?

How to Master A New Skill?

How to Improve Character Stat?

How to Earn Money In Prison Life RPG?

How to Increase Happiness?

All Skills Stat Requirements

How to Escape from Prison?

Which Character is Easy to Play for Beginner?

Let's start with a simple beginner guide for first timer, I would suggest to choose Uncle Rico as playable character. As Uncle Rico is the most easy to play, he has Kiss Ass skill, Social skill, and basketball.

Join Gang As Soon As Possible

If you choose Uncle Rico as playable character, you can either join Roses & Guns Gang or Heart Breakers Gang. You also can join Mobster and Gold Coin Gang but you needs to master body building and chess skills from other inmate. During day time just head over to either one gang street and improve relationship to 100 then tap on "Join Gang".

Benefits of Joining Gang:

Reduced random AI inmate bully (Sometimes you may end up getting beat up by them)

Extort money from random inmate

Complete gang job to gain gang frame and promote higher rank in gang

Buy items in your gang shop got discount 20%

Complete as much gang job as possible to get higher rank in Gang as the higher you are the more benefits you will get. Once you have enough gang frame, just head to one of the guards (Forget about his name) during afternoon. He is in-charge of gang matter, talk to him and you will get promoted.

Tips: Give up gang job will reduce your gang frame, so pick job carefully!Tips: Don't pick big money and high frame job if you don't have kill or fighter skills as most of the time those job required you to kill someone or beat someone.

Who to Make Relationship With?

This depends on individual style of playing the game, for me I would go learn survivability skill first. For example, fighter, kills, and threaten skills. Since Uncle Rico doesn't have these skill at the beginning so I'm going to make friends with who have these all skills. Let's say I choose Rex (Fighter and Threaten)

After you and Rex have 100 relationship, you need to have certain item to learn skills and different skills need different item. For example to learn fighter skill you needs to have 1 burger. Once you learned fighter skill, it is not mastered yet. You need to mastered it then only available to use.

Since Uncle Rico has Kiss Ass skill, which is good for improve relationship with guards. Improve relationship with guards allow you to change default 4 cell to private cell or change default wash toilet job to kitchen. Besides this, improve relationship with guards will makes your life easily for later game as some guards will help you escape from prison.

Tips: Try to find someone with more skills that you needed so it will save your energy to make another relationship with other inmate.

Where to Buy or Get Certain Food or Items?

Each Gang have their own shop and each of them selling different items. Each item only allow to buy once per day, so if you have extra money buy some foods every day to stock up.

Mobster Gang - Weapon

Gold Coin Gang - Medicine

Roses & Guns Gang - Tools

Heart Breakers Gang - Food

These shops sell basic items that is used for crafting some more advance items. Crafting is only available before you sleep. Just tap on crafting to see what items you wants to craft. If you don't have the basic items just head to shop respectively to get it on the next day. Some of items in crafting list are required for skill learning. For example to learn fighter skill you needs one burger in your inventory (Bread + Meat). If you don't want to craft it, tap on Burger and it will shows you what other alternatives way to get it.

If you got nothing to do during day time you can use "Idle", sometimes you will get cockroach or coins from floor. But sometimes you will get nothing, so you either get something or don't get anything.

How to Master A New Skill?

After you have 100 relationship with inmate you can either recruit him or learn new skills from him. Select skill that you wants to learn and get the item or food he needs to learn the skill. If you don't have that particular item or food, you can refer previous section on how to get certain item or food.

Once you learned the skill, it is still unable to use until you master it. You needs to train the skill in order to master it and train skill only available before sleeping time, which is after shower. Train skill required energy too, so if you planned to train skill on that day, stock up with food in Heart Breakers Gang shop.

Don't train so much in 1 day as every time you train you consumes energy and costs you 1 hour. You needs to get enough sleep to regain energy for next day. Let's say you train so much until 4AM then you go to sleep, you only sleep for 2 hours and you only regain 2 hours energy. So do the maths! Once skill is mastered it will shows up in your profile page and you can use the new skill when rolling dice.

How to Improve Character Stat?

Why you need to improve your character stat? This is because some items in crafting requires high intelligent to craft so you need extra intelligent to do it. So far I only found out Mad Doctor in prison clinic able to improve character stat, but I haven't try it out myself. Different stat required different items and required to pay money to improve character stat, is this stat permanent or temporary I'm sure as I haven't got the chance to collect all required items.

So how can I meets Mad Doctor in prison clinic? Easy, just get yourself beat up and lose all your health or lose in boxing championship and you will ended up in prison clinic for 6 hours.

How to Earn Money In Prison Life RPG?

There are few ways to earn money:

Go to Work (Default would be cleaning toilet)

Gamble

Cheat

Complete Gang job

Complete common job

Win boxing championship

Extort from other inmates

Choose Joker as playable character in Prison 1-10 as he has passive skill to get money everyday! ($200)

Since I started with Uncle Rico and I don't have gamble and cheat skills so both of these alternatives of getting money are out. At the beginning I choose Go to Work, which consume your energy in return to get little money and I think this is totally worthless. After that I earn money from winning boxing championship and completed big money gang job as well as common jobs.

Winning boxing championship for Uncle Rico sometimes depends on luck as Uncle Rico's strength and agility are considered medium-high-end. So sometimes you will lose to those have higher strength and agility inmates. Once you KO'ed in boxing, you will send to prison clinic.

How to Increase Happiness?

As long as you still staying in prison, every morning when you wake up you will -20 happiness. When happiness below 30 you will get nightmare while sleeping and nightmare will causes you can't sleep well and hence you don't regain much energy on next day. So maintaining happiness is very important. But how to increase happiness?

Buy D.I.Y Magazine everyday at Heart Breakers Gang shop (+30)

Kill someone during shower (+20)

Win boxing championship (+30)

All Skills Stat Requirements

Here will list out all stat required for all skills, so that you can have a better plan on which character to choose next and which skills that meet required stat.

Strength

Agility

Intelligence

Charisma

BodyBuilding

5

Basketball

3

4

Chess

5

Joker

3

5

Flirt

4

6

KissAss

4

3

Social

6

LockPick

4

4

Banker

8

Architect

7

Fighter

6

4

Killer

6

4

Threaten

3

3

Stealth

7

Gamble

4

6

2

Disguise

3

3

Shaolin Kungfu

9

9

How to Escape from Prison?

I'm still in the prison when I'm writing this as it time consuming to kiss ass with guards and other inmates to help me out. I will update this section when I success escape from Prison!

Update:Finally I'm successful escape from prison after failed for few times. So I choose to escape prison via stick bay.

First of all, if you are playing Prison Life RPG by now you should know where to check your escape plan. If you don't know yet, just tap on your own character you will see inventory, my jobs, and escape plan. You will see a lot of pins in escape plan map, those are your options to escape. For example if you choose sick bay as one of your escape pins, it will shows you what are the requirements for you and you just need to choose one out of three options.

Once you had selected your initial pin and decided which option you wants then it will shows you next pin to choose. Some of the escape plans are short and some are long. For example, the plan I took was sick bay to high fence to dogs to low fence to freedom and that was 5 pins.

Once you had selected all the pins you wants to escape, you will notice some of the pins are in red color and some of them are green color. Red pin means option that you had selected is not met or not having such item while green mean you had that skill or item required at that pin. So you need to ensure all your pins are green before escape. There is a button called "Escape Now!" beside help button once all your pins are green. Tap on it and you and your prison break team are now ready to escape.

Check my escape gameplay below and thanks for reading all my guide! I hope my basic guide will help you in Prison Life RPG.

Prison Life RPG iOS Game Review

Prison Life RPG by Nob Studio is prison simulation role playing game where you plays as a prisoner and your objective is to survive in prison until you are released or have a escape plan to get freedom. There are 100 prisoners to play and each of the prisoners have different set of skills and personal goals, complete prisoners' personal goal to unlock next tier prisoners (11-20) and so on. When you are first timer, you are allow to choose 1-10 prisoners to start with, and for 1-10 prisoners only sentence for 20 days while 11-20 prisoners sentence for 40 days, so I assume the game play will getting longer when you unlock next tier and it gives a lot of replay value to you and me as the play style is too random.

When the game started there is a general tutorial by Cook, the tutorial gives you an idea what is the game play looks like, for example social to make some friends, bully other inmate, fight them, or even kill them! Remember to join a gang as soon as possible to avoid getting bully by random AI inmate, after joined a gang you will at least get protected by your gang members and not so easily get bully by random AI inmate. In order to join gang, prisoner required to improve relationship with the gang with some mastered skills and these skills are default by some prisoners. So I will suggest to start with those prisoners with these mastered skill by default. There are 4 Gangs such as Mobster Gang, Gold Coin Gang, Heart Breakers Gang, and Roses & Guns Gang. Each Gang required one mastered skill, Mobster (Body Building), Gold Coin (Chess), Roses & Guns (Basketball), and Heart Breakers (Social).

Everyday starts with 6AM, lunch at 12PM, shower time at 7PM, and sleeping at 8PM onwards. Each action costs you 1 hour, for example social 1 time with inmate will costs you 1 hour from 6AM to 7AM and will consumes some energy too. Other than that, there are jobs for you to complete to gain frame and money. There are 2 kinds of jobs, 1 is gang jobs which only available after you joined a gang and gang job is available in the morning. Another job is common job which only available during afternoon, these common jobs sometimes are quite challenging and it gives good money and frame. Complete a gang job will earns you gang frame, which is useful to promote your gang ranking.

During lunch time prisoners are given 1 food and 1 dessert, eat food will gives you a boost of energy and some health. You need to have minimum 30 health to stay healthy, if you have less than that I suggest you to buy some food from Heart Breakers Gang shop. During lunch you can take other prisoners' food and dessert, it just like what we saw in TV we can actually threaten them to offer you their food and dessert. Each successful threaten will give you negative relationship to that prisoners and they will hate you. You may eat the food or you may offer the food to other prisoners to improve relationship with other prisoners.

After lunch you will stay at indoor cell to have other part of game play such as you can accept common job, gamble, cheat in gamble, bet in boxing, or watch TV to gain happiness. Common job is controlled by Mobster Gang and some of the jobs give good amount of money and big frame when you completed it, but it comes with challenge. You may get $1000 by killing someone in front of guard, if you did that you will get a special reward, which is stay at prison for a life time (99 years)! So think twice before doing that!

The only time you can flight and kill inmate without getting caught by guard is during shower. If you wants to fight and kill other inmate, make sure you already master fight, body building, helpers, kills and other skill to give you a boost. If not you may just take shower and leave, just make sure you don't drop soap on the floor!

After shower usually you will go back to your sleeping cell, it starts with 4 cell prison and you can upgrade to 2 cell prison or even private suite prison. But before upgrade you need to improve relationship with guard. You can train skills, sleep, crafting items, social, and enjoy D.I.Y magazine to boost your happiness at your sleeping cell. You can train skill during night time, different skill required different stat and consumes 10 energy usually. For example, train body building skill your character required 5 strength, fighter skill required 6 strength and 4 agility. The game will auto save every night when you sleep and there is no auto save during day time, so if you just pick and play then quit the game your progress will not saved [as of version 1].

Prison Life RPG has a lot of nick names, these nick names are considered as in game achievements and some of them are in Game Center achievements. You can tap on each nick name to know how to unlock it. I had completed my first game using Uncle Rico and I got 13/124 nick name, pretty awesome I would say. It also gives player like me to play more as I'm that kind of like to unlock everything in games! Oh yes, character that successful release from prison will wear a T-shirt in main menu that gives you an indicator that you already play with that character.

Prison Life RPG is premium game without iAP, no internet connection is required. Prison Life RPG has a tons of Game Center achievements to unlock and I like games that comes with Game Center achievements! So if you are like me, this game is for you! Just in case for those who still on the bench to get the game, you may wants to watch a short game play video below. [Prison Life RPG iTunes link]

Thanks for reading my long post! Please let me know what you thinks about this game in comment section!

Wednesday, 18 February 2015

Imps in Tokyo iOS Game Review

Imps in Tokyo is an arcade game based in Tokyo with comic driven story mode develope by We Are Vigilantes and release on 17th Feb 2015. The game is [1.99] for early adopters and [3.99] for regular price with Trials game mode. So if you like this game better grab now to get early adopters price.

Imps in Tokyo comes with 5 playable Imps characters and each character comes with own ability and design. 4 Imps are playable at the beginning in the story mode and the other one will be unlocked after reaching certain level in story mode. Here are two of the Imps in the game, Eugene has a tiny dragon wings and damage with tail, it also the only Imp that farts in game! Next, Hester is a big sis and it has a poisonous tail that can slow down piranhas. For me Hester's poisonous tail not really slow down piranhas as the effect shows stun effect on top piranha head so I would say Hester's poisonous tail stun piranhas.

Each level you are given 2 imps to choose with and you need to pick one of them to complete the level. Even tho Hester's poisonous tail is very useful but there are certain levels using Eugene is better option than using Hester. Each level has different main objectives, some collect points and some capture piranhas and each level also have some optional objectives, achieve all objectives you will get 3 stars. Getting 1 star from main objective is not a problem, but getting 3 stars from main and optional objectives are not easy as most of the optional objective required to collect all points or defeat all piranhas. There is no problem if you dont get 3 stars, next level will be unlocked as long as you complete main objective. Getting 3 stars only for hardcore players to unlock achivement in game center so if you like achievement a lot like me, then this game is for you!

The game control is using 1 finger to move around and imp will follow your finger. I would suggest play in iPad rather than iPhone. I have a big hand where my hand is bigger than my iPhone 6 Plus, since this game is using finger to move around it would be great if play with iPad. I tried to play this game in both iPad and iPhone, in iPad I have clearer view to collect points and clearer view to avoid spike piranhas compared to my iPhone. Yes, there are two types of piranhas one is without spike and the other one is with spike. You should avoid the one with spike else you will lose one life and each game will gives you 3 life so better becareful with spike piranhas.

Imps in Tokyo comes with a detailed tutorial to guide new player to understand how to play the game so no worries on how to play the game. Other than complete main and optional objectives, some times you will randomly see a cat appear in game and if you see it, tap on it to rescue the cat. A mini endless game will be unlocked with playable cats character!

I'm one of the beta testers in Imps in Tokyo, you might think this reivew is biased but you can watch Imps in Tokyo game play video below and support developer if you like the game. And thanks developer for putting my name in their credit screen.

Thanks for reading! Please do let me know what you think about this game in comment section!